Jebli Arabic

Jebli
Jebelia
Native toMorocco
EthnicityJbalas, Ghomaras, Sanhajas de Srayr
Language codes
ISO 639-3(included in Moroccan Arabic [ary])
Glottologjebl1238

Jebli (Jebelia) is a pre-Hilalian Arabic dialect spoken in the mountains of northwestern Morocco.[1][2]

The historical development of this Moroccan dialect is unclear.

The word jebli means "of/from the mountain". It is mainly spoken in the western Rif by tribes of Sherifian, Berber and Morisco descent over the past ten centuries.

  • Jbalas: all its 44 tribes speak Jebli Arabic;
  • Ghomaras: out of nine tribes, seven are fully Jebli-speaking, the two remaining are partially Jebli-speaking, with a significant Ghomara Berber-speaking community;
  • Sanhajas de Srayr: two Jebli-speaking tribes – Ketama and Aït Seddat – out of ten tribes, the remaining (eight) speak Sanhaja Berber;
  • Riffians: out of twenty tribes, six are fully or partially Arabophone; among them, five speak Mountain Arabic − Targuist, Aït Itteftf, Aït Boufrah, Mestasa and Metioua − while the last one (Settout) speak Hilalian Arabic;
  • Tribes of Zerhoun (Zerahnas) and the neighborhood of Sefrou (Kechtala, Behalil and Yazgha): although not belonging to the same ethno-linguistic group than Jebalas, their pre-Hilalian dialects are sometimes classified as belonging to the same macro-family (westernmost pre-Hilalian village dialects) as Jebli.

Jebli is influenced by Berber; most of the words are Arabic but the vocabulary is highly influenced by Spanish.

  1. ^ Fernández, Montserrat Benítez; Guerrero, Jairo (2022-11-01). "The Jebli speech between the media and the city: exploring linguistic stereotypes on a rural accent in Northern Morocco". International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 2022 (278): 181–202. doi:10.1515/ijsl-2022-0015. hdl:10261/288467. ISSN 1613-3668.
  2. ^ Laaboudi, Daouia (2021-08-01). "Discourse Marking Variation in Moroccan Arabic: Requests as a Case Study". International Journal of Arabic Linguistics. 7 (2): 109–122. ISSN 2421-9835.